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The project consists of two 2-bedroom houses, an artist's studio and inner courtyard sited on a curved, L-shaped brown-field site to the rear of a terraced row of listed buildings on Bermondsey Street, SE1.

One of these 300-year old buildings is our home. We were concerned about a proposed discordant and intrusive developement on this backland, and so chose to take control and become developers.

Our interests lay in sustainable building, and our ideas we believed were more contextually sympathetic to the vernacular, to the scale and character of this conservation area, and to the marriage of ancient and modern.

We decided to extend our house by retaining some land for a garden and studio, whilst the remainder was to be built on in such a way as to cover the costs of the project. We researched the history of the street and wider area and uncovered old photographs and documentation, which revealed much use of timber cladding and shuttering (for ventilation).

This strongly influenced the choice of timber cladding throughout the scheme. The old plot layout was to be followed, giving a simple strong form to the proposal.